1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to techniques for content sharing among communication devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
A content sharing service platform enables users of devices at remote locations to share multi-media content such as photographs, videos, music and documents stored within their devices. Content sharing has become particularly popular among mobile device users, where content is shareable over a wide area network. Recently developed methods allow a user to group several personal content storage devices so that each device becomes available to provide content associated with that user to third parties.
Internet and mobile chatting, messenger, Social Network Services (SNSs) and VoIP services allow a user to publish his “presence information” to other users. A user who publishes presence information is often referred to as a “presentity”. Presence information is a status indicator that conveys the ability and willingness of a potential communication partner to communicate. Traditional presence information just shows a communication status such as “free for chat”, “busy” or “away”. Recently, presence information has expanded to include a current communication bearer (i.e., wireless protocol) of the user device such as Wi-Fi, 3G or 4G, which is displayed on a contacts page or phonebook adjacent other contact information of an instant messaging application. For instance, certain services charge for data usage via 3G and 4G but not for Wi-Fi, and video conferencing is only available through Wi-Fi for some providers. Thus, knowing communication capabilities beforehand is an added convenience to users.
One method of sharing contents between mobile devices involves the provision of IP addresses. That is, each mobile device obtains the IP address of one or more other mobile devices with which communication is desired. However, users are inconvenienced by the process of confirming the IP address of the other mobile device prior to sharing contents for every sharing session.
Another method of sharing contents utilizes a content sharing application. Here, each participating mobile device needs to download and set up the same content sharing application. Each device also needs to know the user ID of the other party device prior to sharing content. Hence, these types of content sharing applications have proved cumbersome to users.